The Wildfire Youth Media Initiative at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy invited community members to attend wildfire listening sessions to record their story with high school reporters from the Pacific Palisades and the greater Altadena area. The events were an opportunity to share their memories, hopes for the future, and lessons learned from the fires in company with many members of their community. Anyone who was impacted was welcome: survivors, neighbors, friends, students, journalists, volunteers, community organizers, and more.
We encouraged community members to bring objects of particular meaning, such as items they found in the aftermath, aided in their recovery, or helped them live or work through this experience.
Pacific Palisades Listening Session
Date: July 19
Time: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. PT.
Location: KCRW
Address: 1660 Stewart St, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Altadena Listening Session
Date: July 26
Time: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. PT.
Location: Pasadena Playhouse
Address: 39 S. El Molino Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91101
Each listening session wasorganized around five question-based story stations, where we invited people to answer questions organized around a theme. In addition, we had two unique recording spaces. One was for high school students impacted by the wildfires. These “peer storytellers” had a separate space to speak with the Wildfire Youth Media Initiative high school reporters. We also had a separate recording space for individuals whose work was profoundly impacted, even if they may not live in the affected areas –– including journalists, philanthropic leaders, community organizers, business staff, volunteers, etc.
The event were recorded for podcasts, short-form videos, and other content produced by our high school reporters, for publication by USC and potentially other public media outlets, including KCRW and LAist. Interviews plan to be preserved as a digital collection held by USC and the Los Angeles Public Library.
About the Wildfire Youth Media Initiative
The Wildfire Youth Media Initiative at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy (CCLP) is a four-week summer program for 18 high school reporters––nine from the Pacific Palisades and nine from the greater Altadena area.
Working with USC faculty at the Annenberg School for Journalism and Communication, the students will be trained through on-campus workshops and on-site visits to the Palisades and Altadena to collect communities stories of both the incident and its aftermath. The community listening sessions, one for the Palisades community and one for the Altadena community, are designed for the students to gather stories from community members for an oral history project – to be deposited at the Los Angeles Public Library – and for media that may appear in a range of formats – on podcasts, social media, and public media outlets.
The initiative is intended to serve as a replicable model for other communities affected by natural disasters, providing a framework for high school students to help document and tell their communities’ stories.
This program is part of CCLP’s Local News and Student Journalism Initiative. The program director is Rebecca Haggerty, professor of professional practice of journalism and associate director of the journalism (BA) program. The program coordinator is CCLP Junior Fellow Talia Abrahamson. CCLP is led by Geoffrey Cowan, former director of Voice of America (1994-1996) and former dean of USC Annenberg (1996-2007), who is a university professor of communication and journalism.
For more about the Wildfire Youth Media Initiative, please visit our webpage.